This year marks the 20th anniversary of the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium, a collaborative enterprise that brings researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders together each fall to discuss and debate the transportation – land use – environment connection. This year’s symposium will be held October 17-19, 2010, around the theme, “Infrastructure Investment for Sustainable Growth.” The symposium series was founded with the goal of creating an invitation-only retreat where land use, transportation, and environmental scholars and activists can present their ideas to and interact closely with policy makers, senior practitioners, and private sector representatives. This fall, speakers will address the management of various transportation and land use infrastructure systems, with particular attention to the debates in the areas of energy, green technologies, and how we consume resources.  Attendees will explore the challenges to and opportunities for infrastructure investment, with a focus on how best to evaluate, pay for, and manage infrastructure projects in the face of fiscal and political challenges. From the[…]

Responding to the state crisis in financing transportation systems in California, the Institute of Transportation Studies delivered three educational workshops in Sacramento to legislative staff and aides, to promote understanding and evaluation of transportation finance options for the state. Speakers included government leaders, experts in transportation and finance from academic and research institutions, and senior level administrators from state agencies. This three-part series of workshops, “Financing California’s Transportation System: Strategies for Moving from Crisis to Stability,” explored the current state of transportation finance, offered and evaluated various options, and set a roadmap for responding to and leading the way out of our state’s current fiscal crisis. “The key to the success of this series was that it was the right mix of academics and real-world practitioners,” said Carrie Cornwell, chief consultant for the California Senate’s Transportation and Housing Committee. “Having them all in the same room at the same time talking about the same topic created a lot of opportunity[…]

Social Welfare Professor Yeheskel “Zeke” Hasenfeld was recently selected by the Society for Social Work and Research to be the recipient of the 2011 Distinguished Career and Achievement Award. The award recognizes Professor Hasenfeld’s social work over the years, his level of innovation and research, and impact towards those in the field. Dr. Hasenfeld’s research focuses on the dynamic relations between social welfare policies, the organizations that implement these policies and the people who use their services. The study of these relations enables policy makers and practitioners to understand how social welfare policies and services are actually delivered by workers and experienced by clients, and the resulting impact the policies have on the well-being of their recipients. His current research focuses on the role of non-profit organizations in the provision of social services. He has recently completed an analysis of the impact of welfare reform.

As California moves forward to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and secure a more sustainable future, research plays a key role in informing which policies should be implemented.  California’s SB 375, a regional planning and smart growth initiative, requires many of the state’s regions to meet a target for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.  Regions and cities will coordinate their plans for new development and new transportation infrastructure in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create more sustainable regions.  An important, but very difficult, part of this process is planners’ ability to predict how people will respond to the new development and transportation infrastructure.  Also difficult to predict is the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation recently convened a group of California’s top thinkers to discuss how the state can predict greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.  Included in this group were leading faculty from the University of California System, influential policymakers[…]

“I don’t think it will be a national precedent, but a worldwide precedent,” said Donald Shoup, an economist and professor of urban planning at UCLA and a guru of the parking-reform movement. Learn here what Shoup was describing.

With the November elections steadily approaching, Proposition 23 seeks to kill California’s cap-and-trade system set to take hold in 2011. The proposition will directly undo the cap-and-trade plans for environmental sustainability in California as a means of seeking economic growth. Known as Assembly Bill 32 (“AB 32”), the plan will now face tough opposition from Proposition 23 and its backers, which include the oil industry. With misinformation and myths circulating to skew public opinion, Professor Matthew Kahn recently interviewed with The American Prospect to clear up the confusion. “The optimists say the future of California isn’t Hollywood, and it isn’t the military. It’ll continue to be Silicon Valley. But it’ll also be the green economy, and AB 32 could help the state play this leadership role at the forefront of green tech — whether that’s solar, wind, or electric cars like the Tesla.” Click here to read the article.

Luskin Scholar Matthew Kahn’s study─ showing how energy conservation incentives can sometimes ironically lead to greater consumption─ caught the attention of a range of mainstream media outlets. “Nudges Gone Wrong” was a typical headline about it. Most recently, his study was featured on the American Public Media radio program Marketplace. The “Marketplace” story describes how Dr. Kahn and Dr. Dora Costa analyzed a group of utility customers who were getting regular notices from their power company comparing their energy use with similar households. The economists found that some conservatives, as in political conservatives, didn’t respond all that well to a little nudging from their power company to conserve. “Like a lot of things, environmental conservation is another issue that divides conservatives and liberals─ but maybe it can turn into a bipartisan issue with a little bit of tweaking on how the conservation message is conveyed,” stated Marketplace. Instead of comparing energy usage between neighbors, a more effective way to nudge conservation customers into[…]

As a professor of Asian American Studies, Urban Planning, and Social Welfare at UCLA, Lewis Center Faculty Fellow, Paul Ong is well-qualified to discuss the increase in political participation among Asian Americans. Chosun Ilbo, a newspaper based in Seoul, South Korea, conferred with Ong for a news story citing the effect that Indian Americans have had in recent U.S. elections. The story’s author draws the conclusion that American politics may be going through a transformation, a change in the way Americans accept who may politically represent them. Ong was able to provide historical perspective. He describes how immigrants from Asia had for decades faced what had been insurmountable obstacles in seeking office in the United States. “If you go back far enough, Asian Americans, including Asian Indians, were precluded from participating,” Ong said. “They were precluded from gaining citizenship, certainly, if you go back to after World War Two, an enormous amount of racial prejudice. It was very difficult for[…]

Urban Planning Professor Randy Crane has been selected as the Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). The journal will be housed at UCLA for five years beginning October 1, 2010. As the flagship scholarly journal in urban studies it is the principal gatekeeper for advancing theoretical and empirical work in planning. For more than 70 years, the quarterly journal has published research, commentaries, and book reviews useful to practicing planners, policy makers, scholars, students, and citizens of urban, suburban, and rural areas. With a subscriber base of nearly 10,000, JAPA which publishes only peer-reviewed, original research and analysis is the primary research outlet of the American Planning Association.